24-07-2025
This man wants to build UFO technology for America
Ten years ago, the US navy filed a patent that seemed to describe aircraft that could soar into space and accelerate at speeds faster than light.
At the time, conspiracy theorists said it was evidence that the military had discovered UFOs and was re-engineering alien technology. The navy did not address such claims and has since let the patents lapse.
But now Salvatore Pais, 57, the aerospace engineer who invented the science behind the patents and filed them on behalf of the navy, said he was worried the Chinese were developing the same technology.
He said a paper, called The Plasma Compression Fusion Device, echoes his theories, and has 'been cited greatly, some very prestigious, highly placed Chinese research. I try to sound the alarm bells. Nobody hears me. But the Chinese are the ones who are interested in it'. The paper, which was published in the journal IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science, has since been cited in at least four Chinese scientific papers from 2021 to last year, Pais said.
In 2017, the chief technical officer of the Naval Aviation Enterprise, James Sheehy, wrote a letter to patent examiners claiming that the Chinese were already 'investing significantly' in these technologies.
Several physicists have said Pais's work has elements of pseudoscience, and mainstream publications still refuse to publish him. But while he admits that the funding of his work is 'at a standstill', he says that 'no one has shown my equations are incorrect'.
Pais claims that his inventions work due to extremely high electromagnetic energy fluxes, achieved through acceleration, vibration or spin of an equilibrium — and are enabled by forces he describes as the 'Pais Effect' and the 'Superforce'.
'The experiments must be conducted to prove these ideas correct to generate a non-equilibrium plasma,' Pais said. 'Under certain conditions, it will generate extremely high energy density. If indeed this is correct, the very nature of local space time, what we understand is the fundamental nature of reality, can be manipulated.'
Speaking to The Times in his capacity as a private individual rather than a member of the military, Pais said he believed aliens were real, taking the form of a 'superintelligence' that considers the human race 'an experiment'.
Pais believes that the power achievable through the 'Superforce' makes artificial superintelligence a realistic possibility — and that aliens may already possess similar technologies. Through the energy generated by his inventions, he said it was possible to create a god-like AI capable of 'reinventing the cosmos'.
The navy funded research into Pais's high-energy electromagnetic field generator (HEEMFG) to the tune of $508,000 in 2019, hoping to prove a theoretical electromagnetic field which could have applications in electronic warfare and in fuelling nuclear fusion.
Pais hopes to get more funding to prove that his ideas are correct, saying he needs more people, laboratory time and 'real timelines, real components' to prove the existence of the Pais Effect. 'This is not something that will be done in half a year,' he said. 'This is not something that will be done with, say, four or five people.'
Pais, who lives in California, still works for the US navy on everything from advanced power and environment management systems to electrical engineering projects. In private, he has worked on theories that enable spacecraft to fly and submarines to cut through water without friction. In 2015, he filed his five patents with the support of the navy and the Naval Air Warfare Centre Aircraft Division.
His 2015 patent, entitled 'Craft using an inertial mass reduction device', argued that space travel was possible by using microwave emitters which vibrate a plasma (a fourth state of matter after solid, liquid and gas) and create 'voids' in the space-time continuum. The patent for his technology was signed by the US navy.
It may seem surreal that an institution like the navy would entertain ideas of little green men, but the discussion around UFOs has become increasingly mainstream. Jon Kosloski, director of the Pentagon's air anomaly investigation unit All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, heads up an investigation into hundreds of possible UFO sightings.
And while President Trump says UFOs are not 'his thing', he has repeatedly sparked interest with comments, such as calling Roswell — where an alleged UFO crashed in 1947 — a 'very interesting place'. Pais has supporters among fringe podcasters like Ashton Forbes, who has 88,000 subscribers and believes his research could revolutionise physics.
Born in Romania, Pais moved with his family when he was 13 to New York City and studied at the Brooklyn Technical High School, where he received his doctorate. He says his decision to file the patents starting in 2015 came after rejections from academic publishing.
'At the time I was working for the United States navy,' he said. 'They have an invention evaluation board. They actually approved all five, which was a first, especially on such a highly controversial subject matter. But I was able to convince them.'
When contacted by The Times, the US navy declined to comment on Pais or his patents.
